Blog

Holidays are almost around the corner and with just a couple of weeks to go, people are getting ready to make the most out of the two biggest shopping days of the season followed by Thanksgiving – Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Black Friday marks the beginning of the Christmas shopping season, while Cyber Monday is the day when retailers strive to persuade people to shop online. If you’re a multichannel ecommerce platform owner, chances are you’ve already started planning about increasing your sales during these two days like never before.

Over the last several years, businesses from every field have started offering eye-grabbing deals to attract customers and drive more holiday sales. Brands consider these days as a marathon of sales opportunities and do everything they can to ensure they’re prepared for the influx of shoppers. While your preparations should’ve ideally started at least a few months back, it’s never too late to step into the field if you really want to make the most of holiday sales on these special occasions.

Chalking out the perfect strategy for your multi-channel selling software is of utmost importance to capture customers’ attention and achieve the highest possible profits on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Here’re 27 crucial tips you can implement to make this shopping season your best selling season ever.

Use your historical data

Analyze the data available from your earlier holiday shopping seasons. It’ll help you understand what you should expect this year based on the statistics of the last season, and the season before that. Make sure to meticulously compare website traffic, customer behaviors, revenue etc and spot any trends.

Create a banner with your promotional information

First of all, make sure that your site’s home page displays some kind of banner that elaborates your promotions’ information. It has to exhibit all related information, including deals’ timing, coupon codes, limitations etc. Remember to include CTAs in the banner to help shoppers understand your offers in detail and try to make it as much visually engaging as is possible.

Differentiate your products from others’

To make the most out of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, you need to find out that “X factor” in your products. Existing product reviews are a good place from where you can start mining information to identify the differentiators. Go through them to explore if your customers have mentioned certain features they like such as earphones with noise cancellation or a special feature of a laptop you sell etc. Consider using the differentiators in your advertising campaign to educate prospective leads and bring in more revenue.

Announce your offers early

Once you’ve identified the differentiators, it’s time to start piquing the interest of customers. Consider displaying sneak peeks of your special offers on as many numbers of advertising channels as you can. Remember to start advertising earlier than usual as this is a good way to give the customers something to look forward to and plan accordingly.

Focus on having word-of-mouth advertising

A strong percentage of online shoppers read product as well as customer reviews before making a purchase decision. Put the existing customers’ reviews to work, both positive and negative – these can include star ratings and/or quotes from the actual customers, which lend authenticity and credibility to your campaign.

Offer something away for free

Almost every multichannel ecommerce platform owner offers a standard percentage of discounts for both Black Friday and Cyber Monday. But offering something for free is more of an enticement than only a percentage off. These may include rewarding your existing customers by offering them an insider reward, early access, or something for free to thank them for their continued loyalty. For instance, you can create a joint promotion with another retailer where you may leverage one another’s audience. If you sell sports gears, for example, you can join hands with a men’s clothing line and get access to each other’s existing customers.

Don’t forget the power of emails

Information sent to customers by you is heavily important when it comes to increasing your bottom-line. Your promotional emails have to be crafted carefully and be as short as possible while containing just the most essential information. To capture customers’ attention, mention only the best bargains on offer and get them to click through to know more. Don’t forget to add a CTA in each promotional email.

Focus on personal shopping preferences

It’s much easier to sell products to existing customers than it is to acquire new customers. Pay close attention to what exactly was purchased by your existing customers earlier and offer them attractive discounts for similar products. If you can make your customers feel special by providing them with what they’re looking for, they’re more likely to buy and come back again.

Optimize your campaigns to sell more

Once you’ve got the attention of your audience, it’s time to concentrate on creating campaigns that help increase your conversion rate as much as possible. When you keep marketing automation tools like Google remarketing ads, order notifications etc turned on, your campaigns will automatically get optimized, thus freeing your time, which you can invest for other developmental aspects of your business.

Consider using Shopping Feeds and PPC

If you’re not using PPC (pay-per-click advertising) or Shopping Feeds currently, it’s a good time to start doing so. These types of advertising vehicles can greatly help your business attain greater visibility and a significant boost in traffic volumes. Also, these models are relatively fast to set up and can start driving traffic your way quickly.

Leverage the power of social media

On social media, create engaging and personalized content that boasts of specific interests revolving around the upcoming holiday theme. To boost audience engagement, consider using components like GIFs, videos, carousel ads, slide shows etc. You can even offer incentives for sharing your content to attain more organic reach. For example, you can tell the audience something like “Share this and get additional 5% off.”

Place a countdown widget

Once you’re done with announcing the upcoming holiday sales and promotions, it’s time to upload a countdown timer on the website. It can be a fun and useful way to encourage customers to take action and inform them when exactly to come back and start saving. Ideally, you should place the widget on a dedicated sales page or your homepage to let the customers see it easily.

Don’t forget the abandoned cart

Fighting the abandoned cart can greatly help you recapture sales you would have otherwise missed out on. And when a huge percentage of online shopping carts are abandoned before customers complete their purchases, that’s a lot of conversion you could be taking advantage of. So, try to reconnect with visitors who’ve navigated away from their carts and remind them of the amazing stuff they have left behind.

Turn site visitors into customers

Even if people are ready to purchase when they visit your site, they can still get distracted and navigate away without making a purchase. With retargeting, you can recapture these folks’ interest and bring them back to purchase products from you. Whether you’re looking to boost sales for existing products or are planning to introduce a seasonal collection, retargeting helps you convert site visitors into customers to a great extent.

Promote bigger checkouts

When performed strategically, offering substantial discounts to the customers at checkout can encourage them to purchase more. Consider adding a “promo code” to the campaigns, which customers spending a specific amount can use to leverage, and mention a time window to motivate them to act fast.

Incentivize impulse purchases

Almost everyone of us buys that last-minute candy bar or magazine at the store checkout line while waiting for our turn to pay. While these impulse items are prominently displayed at brick and mortar stores, there’s no reason not to offer them when it comes to increasing online sales. Imagine a customer clicking on a product while shopping online but not adding it to his/her cart. You can show him/her a popup offering an additional 10% off that passed-on item.

Run a sampling campaign for new product(s)

If you’ve plans to launch new product(s) on Black Friday and/or Cyber Monday, it’s likely that you don’t have customer reviews for those products. Offer your existing customers the opportunity to try out these products in exchange for their honest reviews. Not only does this let you get feedback about the product(s) and develop the review volume, but it also acts as a great way to reward your loyal customers.

Make your site mobile responsive

According to research, people spend a whopping 51% of their internet usage time on their mobile devices. It means that a majority of your promotional information is being viewed on mobile devices. This makes it extremely crucial to have a mobile responsive website template. Make sure that shoppers can easily browse your website and make purchases on their mobile devices effortlessly.

Make your homepage title search engine optimized

Showing up in Black Friday and/or Cyber Monday search results is a great way of increasing visibility and thus increase sales in turn. If possible, change your homepage title by including these days as keywords. You can even mention your promotions together with your store’s name. Make sure to keep the title within 60 characters and re-submit your sitemap in advance as it takes a couple of days for search engines to exhibit the change.

Perform keyword research

To boost your sales during these two days, you’ve to make sure that your site is enjoying a good rank in the SERPs. Find out the most relevant keywords to your products to attain the topmost position in the search results and help new customers find you easily. Google’s keyword tool is the best way to identify the keywords most effective for you. Once you identify the keywords, implement SEO best practices to help search engines’ crawlers rank you higher.

Make your inventory fully prepared for influx in sales

You don’t want to run out of products during high-selling periods. So, consider deploying a real-time inventory sync tool that would update you about actual stocks in real-time. Also, make sure that you’ve adequate packing material and well-trained manpower to get products shipped out in time to avoid drab-looking packages delivered at people’s doorsteps late.

Focus on having the right customer support

Your website traffic will increase significantly during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. You’ve to develop your customer support team in such a manner that it can handle the influx of customer queries. In addition, your multi channel product listing software should be fully prepared to cope with that load. You can install any of the top-rated customer service apps to make your customer support stand out of the pack.

Keep the your product catalogue up-to-date

You should start evaluating your product catalogue months in advance, ensuring all information about the products to be sold during BFCM holidays are up-to-date. Provide your tech partners with the data they need to help you succeed. Since search engines like Google use the product catalogue for Product Listing Ads, keeping it up-to-date will bring in more revenue your way.

Run a special contest

Contests can do wonders when it comes to capturing audience’s attention. You can take an idea from Instagram and organize a photo competition. Ask your customers to click a nice picture of some of the products they purchase during BFCM holidays and offer a reward for the best photo. You can also come up with your own idea for the contest. Just make sure to keep it directed towards increasing audience engagement.

Let your customers know about the sales period

Black Friday sales continue on to Cyber Monday, and you should ideally let your customers know about it. Make sure to provide additional information about this duration of special offers and promotions, regardless of the channel(s) you use to convey the message. Even if the customers didn’t make a purchase initially, highlight extended opportunities for them to reap the benefit of special prices.

Explore the power of free shipping

Offering free shipping on purchases on Black Friday and Cyber Monday has become quite a popular strategy these days. In particular, effort-averse and loss-averse customers are usually better able to justify their online purchases when they’re offered with free shipping instead of unexpected, extra costs. Consider installing applications that would let you inform your customers about gifts, free shipping and other interesting offers in an effortless manner.

Test everything

You need to ensure that everything is working absolutely fine on your multichannel ecommerce platform, particularly the checkout process. Check for broken links, 404 errors, and ensure that your Google Analytics is tracking data properly. It’s also strongly advisable to have some fresh eyes to look over the website in case there’re things you’ve missed out on. Remember to have proper backup plans in place (just in case anything goes wrong).

Wrapping up

Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales are a great way to boost the bottom-line by encouraging existing customers to come back and even find some new ones. When planned properly together with strategically designed tips mentioned above, you can see very high returns on your investment during this holiday season. So, plan well, implement these tips, raise your marketing budget a little, if required, and don’t miss this opportunity to make the most out of this shopping surge.